SharePoint 2013 Search Find an Item Limited or No results

Question

Users are seeing inconsistent search results when searching for an item in a list.

Ex. The list includes the following column entries: webnbprc001 webnbprc002 webnbprc003

Searching by prc returns 0 results. Searching by prc* returns 0 results. Searching by webnb returns 0 results. Searching by webnb* returns many results. Searching by webnbprc returns 0 results. Searching by webnbprc* returns 3 results.

Ultimately, searching by prc and returning all 3 items would be the goal.

Environment: Windows Server 2012 / SharePoint 2013,Windows Server 2012 / SQL 2012

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

What you are seeing is how SharePoint is supposed to work. Search searches on words. To search on individual words, you will need word delimiters, such as a space or comma. Maybe enter them as web nb prc 001, or split them into separate columns so the user knows what each part means.

The SharePoint "*" wildcard can only be used at the end of a partial word. That's why your webnb* works. (Think of a dictionary, you can quickly find "fishing" by looking for fish (i.e. fish*), but you cannot find "fishing" by looking for "ish*".

Here's an example using various "word breaker" symbols and finding "prc":

Answer 2

Searching by img returns appnbimg002 only.

It may, but not because of "appnbimg002". There must be other columns or data that contains the word "img". (I.e "img abc", "abc img def", "abc-img-def", etc.)

Searching by img* returns appnbimg002 and appnbimg003.

Again, not because of "appnbimg002" or "appnbimg003". "img" must be appearing somewhere else as the first three letters of a word. (As you stated: appnbimg002 and appnbimg003 items include a column with the word imgxxxxx.)

Searching by appnbimg* returns many results.

As that is the expected result with the wildcard at the end.

However, searching by img only returns appnbimg002

Somewhere in that list item is the word "img".